A beautiful gem, hidden underneath bad visuals and more bugs than an ant farm.
Too much is the same in New Vegas, the graphics are still the same and yes the color palette has been expanded (slightly), but that still doesn't mask the Gamebryo engine's aging look. The characters don't actually walk on the environment, they do more of a slide among both flat surfaces and slopes. Character animation is incredibly stiff and the facial expressions? Almost robotic, like one of Disney World's android things.
But the worst part of the game is that they decided, rather than to upgrade to a better, more stable engine, (Hell, the Unreal Engine would have been better) Obisidan decided to stick with the Gamebryo and the game suffers from it. In my playtime, (20 hours plus) I've suffered from about 5 major freezes and numerous minor freezes. NPCs will sometime walk into a wall and keep walking, get stuck on geometry, get stuck IN EACH OTHER or simply disappear. The horrible engine also in some cases, will cause you to have to reload a save from hours before because you will find a character you needed to talk to, dead, because animals or other NPCs killed them.
The new hardcore mode is fine for the more masochistic players, but I chose not to play that way because it makes the game unnecessarily difficult. It becomes less about exploration and fighting monsters and bad guys and more about just trying to keep your character alive. You have to focus on food, water, and even sleep whereas in the regular mode, your character is free from this bondage. We play games to escape reality, not experience it more. I can't say I'm too fond of the new reputation system, which somewhat replaces the karma system. Your reputation is your standing in a certain town or village. If you kill half of the town, they won't like you too much. If you save the town from super mutants they'll love you for it.
I'd like to add that Fallout 3 looks and plays far better than Fallout: New Vegas, and please be aware that I played both on an Xbox 360 so it is NOT a hardware problem. It's just incredibly poor developing on the part of Obisidan.
I would advise that Bethesda keep all future Fallout games in house and, if it comes down to it. DO NOT CHOOSE OBISIDAN AS YOUR DEVELOPER OF CHOICE. They've proven themselves to be incompetent when it comes to developing a game on the scale of Fallout.
If you love the Fallout universe then I would strongly recommend this game to you because you are most likely used to the glitches and bugs that plague this game. However, I warn newcomers that this game is not as stable as most games you've played and if you are able to suffer through that. Then you are truly in for an experience.